Assessing and maintaining integrity of aging structures are of primary importance. Specifically, there is a need to detect and characterize degradation to infrastructure to allow for proactive measures to be taken to minimize potential losses of life and damage to property and natural resources. Examples of the various needs for information vary by particular industry. However, the underlying theme in nearly all questions is answering this fundamental question: “is this component fit for continued service at the current capacity, or does the capacity need to be reduced, or do repairs or replacements need to be made immediately?” These questions arise in a variety of contexts ranging from the oil and gas industry to transportation to civil engineering. Accurate characterization of deformed and damaged pipelines, and real-time detection of tampering or detrimental impacts to a portion of a pipeline is of particular importance to the world's oil and gas pipeline infrastructure. Either immediate or delayed failure of a pipeline can occur as a result of mechanical deformation or damage of the pipeline due to a variety of factors ranging from subsidence to earth movement as well as other causes. Immediate failure may occur, for example, when construction equipment punctures the pipeline and produces a leak at the time of damage. However, mechanical deformation and damage more frequently provide an initiation site for crack formation and delayed failure. Unreported deformation, for example, can result in delayed failure due to either slow crack growth through the thickness or hydrogen-stress cracking of the cold worked and strain-aged steel. Often these delayed failures are caused by fatigue cracks which grow due to cyclic stressing at deformed and damaged locations. Furthermore, structural integrity assessment standards are based on the level of strain present in the structure (e.g., a pipeline) either due to mechanical deformation and/or damage induced by other causes. Measurements required to make these assessments can be particularly difficult in situations where structures that need to be analyzed are large in size and/or are difficult to remove or access. Of particular need is the ability to accurately assess, in situ, the extent of any deformation and/or damage, as well as strain in a pipeline structure that may have been deformed and/or damaged by various intentional, accidental, or natural acts such as sabotage, construction equipment impacts, or earthquakes. Current methods for determining the degree of deformation and/or damage (including, e.g., strain) in various regions of a closed structure such as a pipeline can be complicated and expensive and in some cases impossible due to a variety of factors including, but not limited to, microstructure texture variations in the materials that make up the structures and the difficulty in separating these effects from damage. What is needed therefore is a system and method that can utilize ultrasonic techniques to perform quantitative and/or qualitative analyses of features such as strain, deformation, and damage on structures to obtain information relating to the extent of deformation and/or damage such as dents, bends, bulges, and other deformations. The present invention provides a method and enables a system that allows for such measurements to be made in an effective, efficient, and functionally accurate way. Additional advantages and novel features of the present invention will be set forth as follows and will be readily apparent from the descriptions and demonstrations set forth herein. Accordingly, the following descriptions of the present invention should be seen as illustrative of the invention and not limiting in any way.